4. Click Browse and locate the Folder in which the recording is located.

5. Click the Edit icon for the recording.

6. On the timeline, click on where you would like to add the quiz. This may be at a certain time (e.g. 30 minutes), or after a specific slide.

7. On the left hand menu click the ‘Quizzing’ option and then ‘Add a Quiz’.

8. The Quiz editor will appear in the main window. Select which question type you wish to use and enter your question text, responses and correct answers (if applicable). The correct answer(s) have the radio dial checked next to the response. When you are finished, you can click ‘Add a Question’ to add more than one question to the Quiz, or ‘Done’.

9. After clicking ‘Done’, you have the option to change some of the settings for the Quiz. When you have updated these (if required), click ‘Finish’.

10. The Quiz will be added into your DMU Replay recording at the location you selected.

Dr Paul Cropper is the Programme Leader for MSc Energy and Sustainable Building Design in the School of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Faculty of Technology. Paul was an early adopter with regard to using the Multimedia Enhancement solution (Panopto) at DMU and he is an e-champion in the Faculty.

This blog post describes Paul’s early experiences of recording, some of the barriers that he had to overcome and Paul’s plans for the future.

Paul teaches two semester 2 Modules; Ventilation and Daylight Modelling, and Energy and Thermal Performance. Both Modules enrol attending and Distance Learning students with relatively small cohorts (approximately 6) attending and 15 plus Distance Learning students per Module.

In 2014/15 Paul experimented with the Multimedia Enhancement solution when delivering classes that focus on the demonstration of a proprietary piece of software. The software is complex in nature and Paul wanted to record the sessions in which the software is demonstrated to provide the Distance Learning students with an insight into these classroom sessions. With the ELT Project Officer, Paul explored the use of the recording software on the classroom computer to record the screen and he also introduced PowerPoint slides as a mechanism to automatically index the screen recording using the Events function. However, this was not successful as due to the classroom hardware set up it was not possible for Paul to project the computer screen with the complex software demonstration whilst viewing PowerPoint slides on the lectern monitor simultaneously.

Paul would have recorded further sessions in semester 2 2014/15 but he was unfortunately not always timetabled to teach in a space where the recording software was installed but following the project roll-out on January 4th 2016 Paul was able to use the Multimedia Enhancement software in any classroom and he seized this opportunity.

Subsequently, Paul has recorded every class on both Modules during the 2015/16 academic year. As described, Paul’s initial aspiration was to provide the Distance Learning students with a more engaging resource that represents the live classroom environment when demonstrating complex software and the Distance Learning students have provided nothing but positive feedback in this respect. However Paul’s small cohort of attending students have also fed back that they value having the recordings available and Paul has even gone so far as sharing recordings between the two Module cohorts in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to make the same material available to different cohorts. This approach to recording for everyone and sharing content speaks to DMU’s Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles and ideas in that the resources that were initially created with Distance Learning students in mind benefit all students on the Modules; an aspiration of the DMU Replay service that is currently being implemented at DMU ahead of 2016/17.

Paul talked about UDL and DMU Replay specifically when talking about his use of multimedia in the curriculum as this is a high profile change for DMU and Paul wants to support UDL as well as the Distance Learning students and he sees the use of multimedia as one approach to help satisfy these strategic and pedagogic needs.

Although not linked to the use of recording technology, there were two sessions this year that no students attended. Paul did not make any recordings on these occasions but none of the students raised this as an issue which suggests that the students’ non-attendance on these occasions was due to other factors rather than reliance on a piece of recorded material. Furthermore, as the subject material for all lectures is also provided as formal written lessons (in PDF form) students were not significantly disadvantaged by two sessions not being recorded. This demonstrates another advantage of providing material in more than one form, a principal of UDL.

However, although Paul has not experienced a fall in attendance there is some concern that students may see the recording of classroom activity as an alternative to attending as the DMU Replay policy kicks in and Paul does, and will continue to, re-iterate the need to attend as well as make use of recordings in induction week. Paul is also planning to gather specific student feedback with regard to the use of recorded material and its impact during semester 2 2016/17.

Going back to Paul’s aspirations to record complex software and have Panopto automatically create Events within the resource; Paul tried to create some resources at the desk. However, as has been documented before, recording at the desk can feel very different to recording classes and Paul felt that the content he created in this way was not of a standard he would wish to publish and that is easily achievable when recording in a live teaching environment.

The feeling is that when recording at the desk the student expectation may be heightened by way of production value as they may assume that more time and effort has been put in to an at the desk recording than one that is recorded on the fly as classes are delivered. Paul feels that having more detailed notes or a script when recording at the desk may help and he will try this in 2016/17.

Also, thinking about 2016/17, Paul will continue to record his classes but he is planning make use of the Panopto Editor to manually add Events to provide a resource that is navigable in the student view rather than trying to use PowerPoint where he would not usually to create Events automatically.

Outside of recording classroom sessions Paul has also used the Multimedia Enhancement solution in a variety of different ways to enhance his Modules:

Paul recorded a visiting lecturer from Loughborough University to ensure that the Distance Learning students could engage with the lecture;

At the desk, Paul has recorded a presentation based on a Research Project that he is involved in and this has been shared with colleagues in the UK (Loughborough University), the USA (University of California, Berkeley) and India (CEPT University); and

At the request of the students, Paul has recorded materials to support his cohort to understand the requirements of assignments and with report writing, as the technical report that forms part of the assignment can be challenging and having a video resource available that outlines expectations without providing a full example (that could be plagiarised) supports the students in creating their assignments.

In summary, Paul’s early thoughts around recording specific taught sessions for Distance Learning students have grown into Paul being comfortable enough with the software to record all classes in 2015/16 along with supplementary materials and visiting lecturers (at the desk and in classrooms) that benefit all students within the cohorts with some resources being shared.

This is a great example of how a fundamental use of such technology to record classes, similar to that required by the DMU Replay policy, can organically grow into extended use of multimedia in the curriculum and for other purposes such as Paul’s involvement with and recording for the Research Group.

Paul’s top tips:

When recording at the desk, produce detailed notes or a script before recording as ‘teaching’ at the desk is harder than it may seem but not impossible with a bit of preparation.

Keep re-iterating the message that students need to attend and take advantage of the recordings being made available to help make the most of their learning opportunity at DMU.

Dr James Russell, Principal Lecturer, Film Studies; currently teaches two modules at first year and third year undergraduate level.

James has approximately eighty students enrolled across the two modules and in the 2014/15 academic year James looked to innovate his assessment technique by engaging with one of the electronic assessment tools that DMU subscribes to.

Students studying in both years are required to submit a final essay of around 1500 words and traditionally James would print these and mark by hand. However, James felt that he had perfected his technique to the point where he could not mark any faster and he was also finding that students were not always forthcoming in picking their feedback up in hard copy.

Therefore James sought to identify a different approach to marking that might be more efficient and also make feedback more readily available to the students.

Given that the students submit their essay via the TurnItIn system, James concluded this would be a good place to start and explored the use of GradeMark for marking electronically whilst online.

James quickly identified that he would be able to create a subset of QuickMarks that are relevant to the subject and he marked the latest cohort’s submissions using a combination of QuickMarks and the free form text feedback function that is available in GradeMark.

During this initial year, James also insisted that his students hand in to provide a contingency position and conversations were had with the internal second marker and the external moderator who in turn have found the use of GradeMark to be quick and easy.

In conversation with James, it is clear that the trial use of GradeMark in 2014/15 has been a success. James is also the Subject Group Leader for Media, Film and Journalism and at a recent Programme Management Board meeting James was almost evangelistic in front of colleagues about electronic online marking – hence this blog post.

The benefits of marking online are linked to the students being able to pick their feedback up immediately once James releases this and James also feels that marking online is faster and more efficient than marking in a traditional paper based manner. GradeMark also works well with the second marker being able to see James’ comments on screen and the external moderator has been positive about the format of the downloaded submissions that are sent for moderation.

James will be continuing to mark in this way and next year he is planning to rely solely on the electronic approach. He is also encouraging colleagues to engage, where appropriate, with this scalable electronic marking technique.

Thank you to Dr James Russell for agreeing to have this practice documented and disseminated.

Just a quick post about a neat trick I discovered today that could help improve access to files for students and staff.

A colleague was looking for a more intuitive way to point fellow staff members to a Blackboard course's file repository as the link (in Control Panel) is not always obvious.

Firstly we right-clicked the link in the browser and copied the link location to the clipboard.

We then created a new item in a content area, inserted a picture and submitted.

Once submitted, the item was edited and with the picture selected the hyperlink button was clicked and the URL for the course file repository pasted into the link URL.

The changes were submitted and we now have a big picture/button within a content area that takes staff and students (depending on permissions) to the course files or a specific directory. This is much more obvious for staff members who may be using a Blackboard course or Organisation for sharing files.

We also found that this approach can be used when creating an Announcement too. Using the divider on the Announcement page we can permanently stick a link to the student files to the top of the default course entry page.

Using this approach could help in a scenario where students need the content of a directory and the instructor can save time by using this technique as an alternative to attaching individual files to an item or using the folder content type as the folder content type offers limited ability to wrap links within contextual and support information.

It was anticipated that students studying their first year of the new Mathematics for Scientific Computing module would take four tests on paper but newly appointed module leader, Dr Sarah Greenfield, had other ideas.

Sarah recognised that the nature of the tests; multiple choice with single correct answers, lends itself to an online format. This not only means that Sarah can have the tests marked by the system but it saves paper and makes the tests re-usable year on year with minor amendments.

One hurdle that was overcome was the use of pictures in one of the tests. The fourth phasetest is a thirteen question test in which each of the questions and each of the four options for each question are presented in picture format.

Sarah talked to the relevant specialist and it was decided that to create this test using the Blackboard Learn Virtual Learning Environment would investigated as this was anticipated that this platform would add the most value by way of time saving and recycling the tests.

With support from the ELT Project Officer, Sarah has been able to efficiently create a bank of questions for Phasetest 4 which comprise of the question image and four answer images per question. It took a few hours to create all of the images so that they all appear consistently but this up-front investment is far out-weighed by the time saved by having the tests marked by the VLE and on an ongoing basis, there is no longer a need to re-write and re-print paper tests every year.

Two issues were encountered:

Firstly, when adding pictures (.jpg format) to the test in the VLE, the default permissions do not include any access for students. This means that although the test appears to be fine for instructors, when students take the test for real, blank spaces appear where the pictures should be.

To overcome this, as the pictures were created, they were saved to a single local directory with meaningful filenames and following an agreed structure/hierarchy. Once all of the pictures had been produced, the entire directory was uploaded to the VLE and the folder permissions were changed to include students with read only permissions. Before submitting, the ‘overwrite’ option was selected and the new student permissions automatically percolated through to the sub-directories and files.

The second issue was how to create the thirteen questions in an efficient manner. Sarah could have created each question individually and browsed for each question and its respective four options images as the questions were created but it was estimated that this would represent the best part of a day’s work.

Instead, Sarah created the first question and using the Edit Test screen twelve copies were taken. Sarah then went into the editor for the second question and amended the question title and so on. However, at this point the images in the copied questions were still showing the images for question one. To save time, instead of removing all of the images and browsing the course for the correct image, Sarah made use of the HTML mode in the editor to point the existing code to the correct image.

For example, this code points toward the third answer option for question one:

The key part here is the “Q1/Q1C.jpg” section of the code. This represents the sub-directory and the filename of this particular image.

Using the HTML mode, Sarah was able to copy and paste this code into each of the questions and amend only the sub-directory and filename to show the correct picture for the correct question and its respective answer options.

For example, this code represents the first answer option in question eight:

Note that the code is almost identical with the exception of the sub-directory and filename which is now “Q8/Q1A.jpg”

Using this technique of copy and paste with the HTML mode on, Sarah was able to quickly re-point the links to the relevant picture files in around an hour. This use of HTML mode requires absolutely no knowledge of HTML programming or tags, just a well organised folder to begin with.

Sarah’s students will now sit this phasetest in a computer lab whilst logged into the VLE rather than on paper. This will save Sarah time as there is no longer a need to manually mark the tests and Sarah now has a bank of questions that can be easily added to or amended over the next few years.

The DMU Academic Commons is built on WordPress technology and is managed by the CELT team in Library and Learning Services, although the service is provided by ITMS. The Commons is hosted at: http://our.dmu.ac.uk

The DMU Commons mirrors the idea of the Academic Commons developed at:

The DMU Commons has over 600 registered blogs and 750 registered users.

The idea behind the Commons was to encourage open scholarship by creating a platform to enable Centres, staff, students, external communities etc. to innovate and to exchange ideas. The DMU Commons might include a range of more enclosed spaces for critical data/business confidentiality, but it enables research projects and outputs, teaching and learning plans, Centre plans, archives etc. to be linked and developed.

The Commons is managed by the CELT team, in partnership with ITMS. It is based on a co-operative organising principle. The CELT team are currently working on a plan for extending the use of the Commons, including the deployment of the BuddyPress social networking plug-in and for revisiting Governance. BuddyPress works like a social network, enabling users to develop extended profiles, blogs, friendship networks and groups, and to use messaging, forums and blogs to produce. BuddyPress will provide a shared space for use by students, staff, and DMU communities that will underpin the University's Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy.

Impact: the DMU Commons is focused upon developing the distinctiveness of DMU’s research, and learning and teaching environments. Maintaining and extending the Commons will help DMU to realise its public good agenda, in particular based on a track record of successful research/project bids that focus on social and communal impact. Innovation and co-operation, between staff/students and with external partners and employers, underpins the ethos of the Commons.

I recently took delivery of a new piece of technology from the IT department here at DMU. It’s a telephone… or is it?

Last year DMU started the roll-out of Microsoft Lync to all of its staff members; the vision is that staff will make use of the software to video conference with each other, we will make use of Voice Over IP and we can also manage our time and meetings more effectively due to the integration with Outlook.

From a business justification perspective, all of the points above stand up by way of helping us to be more efficient and save costs but it is the other benefit that this project has ‘accidentally’ delivered that I want to talk about here.

The Centre for Enhancing Learning through Technology (CELT) works independently from the IT support department as part of the Library and Learning Services Directorate at DMU. However projects that the IT team delivers will often have a knock-on effect on CELT’s work and can sometimes deliver unexpected teaching, learning and assessment related benefits.

In order to take full advantage of MS Lync, the IT team has equipped each staff member with a new telephone – I was quite excited to take delivery of mine as my previous device would have been more at home in a museum than on my desk but aside the obvious benefits of clearer sound, being notified when I had missed a call and being able to see when my next meeting is scheduled on the telephone’s screen I also noticed that there are now some new cables on my desk.

The cable I’m really excited about (if I can get excited about a piece of black wire) is the USB cable that now plugs into my PC and the new ‘phone.

This cable not only facilitates the communication between the MS Lync desktop application and the telephone but my PC also now ‘sees’ the new telephone and its discreet devices as devices that the PC can access, control and interface with.

And here’s the point – by providing each staff member with a new telephone and the USB interface, the IT department has given everyone a good quality microphone and speaker that their computer can see and use.

Over the last couple of years, as one of the Enhancing Learning through Technology Project Officers at DMU, I have worked with a number of staff in areas such as creating screencast based resources, providing audio or audio/visual feedback and using screencast technology to provide resources and feedback using a variety of media for Distance Learners and attending students.

One area that has always been a sticking point is the provision of an appropriate microphone and speaker(s) to enable a teaching team to adopt such practice en masse.

Traditionally, I have always advised staff members to look for a mid-range wireless USB headset with microphone as this can double up as a device to be used in the office for recording audio feedback or if staff wish to record their session then the wireless USB headset can also be worn whilst teaching in order to capture audio as part of a lecture capture solution without having to loan or purchase a separate lapel mic’. However, such headsets can cost around £50 each and this cost can be prohibitive.

I have also come across instances whereby teaching staff will be in possession of a microphone but it will be an older 3.5mm jack plug style microphone. This would be ok when maybe using the Windows sound recorder to produce audio files but when interfacing with software such as Expression for the production of screencast type content, a USB microphone is required as in my experience Expression does not interface with more traditional equipment plugged into a jack plug and other applications struggle to pick up the older style microphones at a decent volume (even with a bit of tweaking of the levels).

So this brings me back to my nice new shiny telephone and the fact that when it was first plugged into my work PC it installed a few drivers, talked to MS Lync and did everything that the IT team expected it to; but now, when I open the ‘recording devices’ menu on my PC I see I have a new USB microphone available to use that Expression can also see (or is that hear) as well as other software such as Panopto and the Windows sound recorder.

The ‘phone actually has two microphones, the one in the handset and the one that is built into the body for use in loud-speaker mode, it doesn’t matter which I use when using the ‘phone to record audio on my PC, both deliver very good quality audio and the PC doesn’t need to switch between the handset and loud-speaker microphone which makes using the telephone as a USB microphone really easy – it’s just the same as plugging a USB microphone into a computer and talking to it.

The provision of these telephones at DMU has opened up a lot of potential for staff wanting to experiment with audio and audio/visual resources and feedback as everyone now has a good quality microphone on their desk that will talk to software that is free to use or other centrally supported software and they also have a speaker through which recorded content can be played for checking prior to uploading to the VLE, a real bonus for a project that was focused solely on providing a more corporate style communication tool for staff.

One member of academic staff at DMU is ahead of the game in this respect as his location was equipped early in the MS Lync project. Cormac Norton, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences has already adopted the use of his new telephone as a USB microphone to add voice to PowerPoint slides – a case study that looks at Cormac’s technique in detail can be accessed on the CELT Hub here.

This experience also highlights the need for people such as myself, who support the use of technology from a teaching, learning and assessment perspective to be aware of the technology that is centrally provided and how technology that might not have been designed or implemented with teaching, learning and assessment in mind can be exploited in order to make a difference.

I’m sure if we all looked hard enough we’d be able to squeeze just a bit more out of the kit that we are supplied to work with every day.

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